Heads Up: Boost Mobile to Start Throttling Data January 20

Boost Mobile customers who have been enjoying unlimited data on their smartphones are in for a change starting in the new year.

The prepaid carrier announced on its Facebook page that, beginning on or around Jan. 20, it will start slowing down data speeds — a practice known as throttling — for customers who consume more than 2.5 gigabytes a month. At that point, data speeds will drop down to 256kbps until the next billing cycle, when data will resume at full speed.

Boost said customers will receive a text notification when they’ve reached 85 percent of the monthly allotment. The carrier expects that this will only affect a small percentage of subscribers, and tried to reassure folks that 2.5GB is a lot of data. It’s equivalent to about 90,000 emails, 91 hours of streaming music, 20 hours of video clips or 400,000 Web page views.

The change to the unlimited data plans isn’t new news. Boost Mobile made the announcement back in May, and, according to a Sprint spokesperson (Boost is a subsidiary of Sprint), the carrier began texting customers in early December, saying that throttling would begin soon.

Still, some Boost customers are not taking to the changes well. “Why are they doing this???!!!! Dumb,” wrote one customer on Boost’s Facebook page. Meanwhile, others are keeping things in perspective: “This is the least of my worries between 12/21/12 with the WORLD ENDING, on top of that a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.”

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